by David Freed
The digital clock on the Yukon’s dash read 3:20 P.M. More than nine hours had elapsed since I’d last seen Savannah.
I decided it was time to pay Gordon Priest a visit.
WALKING INTO Summit Aviation Services, I could hear him berating his receptionist, Marlene, over some filing error she’d committed. She stood in his office doorway, taking the pounding without pounding back while trying bravely to smile as Priest ripped into her. She seemed more than relieved to see me.
“Mr. Logan. Come to check on your airplane?”
I lied and said yes.
She looked haggard, her eyes rimmed red from crying.
“I’m having a hard time coming to terms with Chad’s death,” she said. “I just can’t believe he’s gone, that he died so violently.”
“He had a record, for Chrissake,” Priest said, walking out of his office to snatch a cookie off of her desk and ignoring me. “He was a loser.”
“My husband has a record, Gordon,” Marlene said, clearly miffed at her boss. “He’s made a few mistakes in his life, but I would hardly call him a loser.”
“A wife beater is more like it,” Priest said.
“He’s never laid so much as one finger on me. Never.”
“When he’s sober, you mean.”
Marlene sat back in her chair and folded her arms.
“You have no right to talk about him that way.”
Priest exhaled. “OK, forget I said anything. I apologize.”
She looked away, her arms still crossed, smoldering.
“Look, all I’m saying is, something was bound to happen to Chad sooner or later.” Priest took a bite of cookie. “He ran with the wrong crowd. I should’ve never hired him. I only did it because my sister wanted me to.”
“Any idea who might’ve shot him?” I asked.
Priest glared at me like I was a bill collector.
“Are you the sheriff?”
I said nothing.
“Well, when the sheriff wants my opinion, I’ll give it to him. Otherwise I’ve got nothing to say.”
“You seem somewhat hostile, Mr. Priest. I’m going to assume you’re just having a bad day, and that you’re not always such an insensitive jerk.”
My purpose was to antagonize him, to knock him off his game a little. People will often reveal things when they’re flustered, little truths that might otherwise remain obscured behind the filters of normal civil discourse.
He strode toward me angrily, half a cookie stuffed in his mouth, his big belly jiggling under his polo shirt.
“That airplane was ancient history. It didn’t matter to anybody. If you hadn’t spotted it, my nephew would be alive today, and I wouldn’t be getting telephone calls from my hysterical sister every twenty minutes. Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused, how much damage?”
“Actually, I do.”
He turned and stormed back to his office, slamming the door behind him.
Whoever it was who’d called me to say he was holding Savannah wasn’t Gordon Priest. Crocodile Dundee spoke in a gravelly baritone. Priest spoke in a whiny tenor. You can disguise a voice only so much. Was it still possible that Priest played some role in the murder of his sister’s son, and in Savannah’s abduction? I wasn’t about to rule out anything or anyone. The fact that Priest had left a message the day before on his office’s answering machine, informing his receptionist that he’d be away all day at some out-of-town meeting struck me as more than curious. Had he left that message with the intent of establishing a credible alibi, then gone into the mountains to help loot a long-missing airplane, opting ultimately not to share with his nephew the profits to be had in whatever cargo that airplane was carrying? I didn’t know, but I definitely intended to find out.
Marlene sat down at her desk and opened the top drawer, revealing an impressive array of candies, cookies, and bags of potato chips. She unwrapped an Almond Joy.
“You mentioned to me yesterday that Chad and Gordon were close,” I said, knowing that Priest couldn’t hear me with his door closed. “Doesn’t seem to me like there was a whole lot of love lost between the two of them.”
The receptionist glanced nervously in the direction of Priest’s door and crammed half the candy bar into her mouth. “Gordon puts on a big front,” she said.
She offered me the other half of the Almond Joy. I declined.
“I’m sorry,” she said, stuffing the half I’d turned down into her mouth. “I get really hungry when I’m sad or nervous.”
“You don’t owe me any explanations, Marlene.”
“Gordon’s really a big softy. He knows he loved Chad. He gave him a chance when nobody else would.”
“I heard he raises Australian shepherds.”
“Not raise. Breeds. For money.” Marlene licked some chocolate from her fingers.
I asked her why Priest was interested in that particular breed of dog.
“Why not golden retrievers or labradoodles?”
Marlene cocked her head, thinking. “You know, I’ve never thought to ask him. Are you interested in getting one?”
“Someday maybe. I don’t know.”
She brightened. “Speaking of beautiful, where’s your beautiful girlfriend?”
I probably should have told her the truth—one more set of eyes looking for Savannah couldn’t hurt—but I was tired and not in the mood.
“She’s around,” I said, “somewhere.”
Marlene laughed like I’d just made a joke. “Well, I’m looking forward to seeing her again—only this time, with a big fat wedding ring on her finger.”
The ring was to have been a surprise. The day before we flew to Lake Tahoe, while Savannah was napping, I’d taken Mrs. Schmulowitz aside and asked if she wouldn’t mind picking me out a wedding band that afternoon from her favorite jewelry store in downtown Rancho Bonita. I knew as much about jewelry as I did ballroom dancing, which is to say, nothing. Mrs. Schmulowitz had survived three bad marriages and outlived a fourth. If anybody was an expert on wedding rings, it was she.
“Do I mind?” she whispered to me excitedly, careful to not let Savannah overhear. “Bubbeleh, I mind when the Giants miss the playoffs. I mind not being able to find a decent bagel anywhere on this entire facacta coast. But do I mind shopping for rings? What are you, kidding me? Now, how much were you planning to shell out for this lasting symbol of your eternal love?”
“I have no clue. How much do rings go for these days?”
“Considering the price of gold? More than you’ve probably got. What happened to the ring you bought her the first time, you don’t mind me asking?”
“She heaved it off the Golden Gate Bridge in the middle of an argument.”
“Making a statement. Nice. I always pawned my bling. Why throw good money after bad, am I right?” She reached up and patted my face. “Don’t you worry. I’ll pick you out a nice ring, bubby—she can always return it if it doesn’t strike her fancy. Pay me back when you can.”
The ring was still sitting in my duffel bag, in a purple velvet box. My plan had been to pretend on our drive to the wedding chapel that the idea of a ring had simply slipped my mind—just to get a rise out of Savannah. Then I would’ve grinned, reached into my pocket, and shown her the ring. She would’ve laughed, kissed me, and all would have been right. That was the plan, anyway. It was now on indefinite hold.
“Think I’ll go out and check on my plane,” I told Marlene.
“Certainly.”
She buzzed me through a glass security door. I pulled the collar up on my leather jacket and walked out to the flight line. Gordon Priest, I decided, could wait. My grilling him about his possible involvement in his nephew’s murder would’ve only antagonized him and probably gotten me in trouble with the sheriff’s department, accused of interfering with Streeter’s investigation.
The Ruptured Duck was tied down directly in front of Summit Aviation, between a Cessna Cardinal and a notoriously unstable V-tail Bonanza—a “Doctor Killer�
� as they’re commonly known in general aviation because more than a few physicians have been known to buy them and die in them. I grabbed a green, six-foot fiberglass folding ladder leaning near the front door, propped it in front of the Duck’s right wing, climbed up, and began brushing off eight inches of wet snow with my forearm.
“Thought you might want this,” Marlene said, emerging from inside, sans coat, carrying a snowbrush in hand.
“ ’Preciate it.”
“You know,” she said, “it occurred to me, if you’re interested in an Australian shepherd puppy, you really should talk to my friend, Liam. He and Gordon, they’re sort of business partners. Liam knows everything there is to know about Aussie shepherds. He’s from there, you know, the land down under.”
LIAM WAS Liam McMahon, proprietor of Sundowner Sports, a ski and kayak rental shop situated about a half mile from the gondola station at the base of the Heavenly Mountain Resort. Marlene had described him as a middle-aged charmer, an expert snow and water skier popular with the ladies. Sitting in my Yukon outside his small but bustling shop and observing the activities within, it was easy to comprehend why:
A wiry man with Goldilocks tresses that he wore in a ponytail, craggy, sun-burnished features, and a quick, dazzling smile, McMahon moved easily among his customers, teasing and laughing as he fitted them for boots, skis and snowboards. I waited until the crowd thinned before going in. If I concluded that McMahon was in any way complicit in Savannah’s disappearance, things could get ugly in a hurry; I didn’t want anyone else but him getting hurt.
What I assumed would be a short wait turned into nearly an hour. A steady procession of customers came and went, most of them young and laughing, eager to hit the slopes the next day. As the sun went down, I found myself growing increasingly antsy, unable to sit still—shpilkes in my toches, Mrs. Schmulowitz called it—needles in my butt. Customers or not, I’d decided I couldn’t wait any longer when my phone rang. Caller ID showed a number in Lake Tahoe’s 530 area code.
“This is Logan.”
“Yeah, you, like, came by and showed me a picture this morning. Some lady you’re looking for?”
The voice was young, male. It took me a second: the high school kid who’d paused from shoveling snow out of his parents’ driveway as I approached him.
“I remember. What’s up?”
“Yeah, well, like, I can’t be a hundred percent sure, OK? But I’m, like, pretty sure I saw her this afternoon.”
ELEVEN
The kid said his name was Billy. He told me he hoped to be either a firefighter and help people, or a downhill racer on the Pro Ski Tour and get laid a lot. He said he’d ditched his last period chemistry class when he stopped off for a fish taco and saw Savannah try to get out of a van behind the Los Mexicanos restaurant on Herbert Avenue. A man, he said, forced her back inside the van.
“When was this?”
“I dunno. Three hours ago.”
“Why didn’t you call me then?”
“Had a trumpet lesson I had to go to. Plus, I didn’t even think about it until just a couple of minutes ago.”
“Did you get the license plate?”
“Um, no.”
“What kind of van was it? The make?”
“I dunno. A van.”
“What did it look like? How old? What color?”
“I dunno. Green, sorta, I guess—it didn’t have any windows, I remember that. Except for, like, you know, the ones on front. What was the other question?”
“How old was it?”
“I dunno. It didn’t look new or anything, but not real old.”
“A panel van, though?”
“What’s a panel van?”
“They don’t have windows except for the ones in front.”
“Yeah. I guess. Whatever.”
Panel vans are popular among small businesses. I asked him if he’d noticed the name of any company advertised on the side.
“Not really.”
“ ‘Not really’ meaning you did see a name but can’t remember, or you didn’t see anything?”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“What about the driver? What did he look like?”
“A guy. I dunno. Regular, kind of.”
“A regular guy. Young? Old?”
“In the middle, I’d say. Sort of.”
I asked him to call me back if he thought of anything else relevant.
“Is there, like, a reward or something?” he wanted to know.
“The reward is in the doing, Billy. The journey is the reward.”
“Oh . . . . Cool.”
He was in high school. He had no clue what I was talking about.
A green van that wasn’t new and wasn’t old. A regular-looking guy who wasn’t young and wasn’t old. A woman who may or may not have been Savannah. Not much to go on, but still, I decided, worthy enough to let Deputy Streeter know, even at the risk of Crocodile Dundee finding out. Dundee had threatened Savannah’s life if I went to the police, but it’s been my experience that kidnappers and other miscreants rarely keep their word about anything. I called Streeter and left a detailed message on his voice mail.
I doubted the sheriff’s department, based on so thin a tip, would flood the area surrounding Los Mexicanos restaurant, hoping to scare up potential witnesses on the thin hope that somebody might’ve seen something. I knew I’d have to do that myself. For the moment, though, I was focused on Australian import Liam McMahon.
A LITTLE bell over the door tinkled as I entered. McMahon was hunched over a workbench, flirting with a twenty-something snow bunny while fitting her rental boots to her rental skis.
“Be with you in a jiff, mate,” he said, adjusting the bindings with a wrench and flat-bladed screwdriver. “Just finishing up with this sweet young thing.”
The voice was low, like Crocodile Dundee’s, but I hadn’t heard enough of it yet to persuade me that Dundee and McMahon were the same man.
“Take your time.” I looked around the shop, pretending to be interested in skis.
He chatted up the girl for another few minutes, rang her up at the cash register, and even managed to get her telephone number.
“Dinner tomorrow night, love,” he said. “I’ll call you, deal?”
“OK.”
“Have fun out there. Ski safe now.”
She gathered up her gear and smiled at me on the way out. McMahon strode from behind the cash register and watched her go, focused on her butt. A fat shark’s tooth hung from a gold chain around his neck.
“God help me, I do love the sheilas,” he said. “Now, mate, how can I help you?”
“I’m Cordell Logan.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Cordell Logan.” He had a firm grip and friendly blue eyes. “Liam McMahon’s the name. Don’t wear it out.”
Had McMahon known my name and been genuinely surprised by my presence, his face would have registered telling involuntary muscle movements that scientists call “micro expressions”—an eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly, the subtle opening of an eye or parting of lips that can speak the truth far more accurately than words alone. But I perceived nothing in McMahon’s facial movements, involuntary or otherwise, to suggest that he regarded me as anything other than a paying customer.
“Australian?”
“Born and bred. Ever been?”
“Several times. Good people. How’d you end up in Tahoe?”
“What else? Chasing a sheila. We fell out of love and I fell in love with where she lived.”
“A lot of other Australians around here?”
“None at all, hardly. Ten, twelve, maybe. I probably know ’em all. Half are retired buggers. Lack the strength to even stand up. The other half are too drunk or doped up to get out of bed most days. What about you? You’re not from around here.”
“Rancho Bonita.”
“Well, you couldn’t have timed it any better, mate, what with all this fresh powder. I can put you on a set of Rossi parabolics that’ll
blow your mind.”
“I’m not here to ski. I’m trying to locate somebody.”
I showed him Savannah’s picture and explained the circumstances of her disappearance.
“Gorgeous lady,” McMahon said. “I’d be bent out of shape, too, if somebody like that had vanished from my life. Tell you what, let me Xerox a copy of that. I’ll put it in my window and ask everybody who comes in if they’ve seen her around.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“You’d do the same for me, mate.”
He took the photo into a back office where his copying machine was.
McMahon, I realized, wasn’t Crocodile Dundee. If what he said was true, that there were no more than a dozen native Australians residing in the greater Lake Tahoe area, then whoever had taken Savannah had to be among the dumbest Aussies who ever lived to front himself the way he did, and Dundee sounded anything but dumb over the phone. The more I pondered it, the more I became convinced that the accent was fake.
I drove over and cruised the strip mall that was home to Los Mexicanos. The restaurant had mirrored front windows and a pretend brick facade painted bright orange. Every employee I approached leaned away from me when I showed them Savannah’s picture, fear in their eyes, like they were about to be deported. Nobody remembered seeing Savannah or a green van parked outside that day. The other mall shops were closed for the evening. There was nobody else to ask questions of. I ordered a chile verde burrito to go and ate it sitting in my car.
A few customers drove in, skiers and snowboarders. It seemed pointless to ask them. Shortly after seven thirty, a black, dinged-up Dodge pickup with tinted glass, chrome mag wheels, and a plow blade pulled in and began scraping snow off the lot, piling it along the edges. I got out and walked over, holding up my hand in the truck’s headlights. The driver braked and his window came down, giving way to the pungent odor of marijuana, and a glassy-eyed young man of about twenty-two with an Oakland Raider’s baseball cap. His earlobes were stretched out like an African tribesman and there was a hole in each the size of a quarter.
